“No worse!” she said, scornfully. “Is it possible you do not know that he is the wretch who figured in the Houston case? You must remember it—the stir was so great and it is not eighteen months ago.”
“I was at school eighteen months ago and never troubled my head with causes célèbres.”
Myra Kay walked on in silence for a few moments; then she briefly told him the facts of the case and was pleased to see him wince.
“The man has been properly punished,” she continued, with satisfaction, “and now no decent manager wall have him—at any rate, till the details of the case are forgotten. He is desperately hard up for money, and every one cuts him. I hope, now that you know all this, you will have no more to say to him.”
“Perhaps he has turned over a new leaf,” said Ralph, looking up from the discoloured track where they were walking to the pure white fields beyond.
Myra Kay gave a sarcastic little laugh.
“You are far too innocent, Mr. Denmead,” she said; and Ralph thought there was an unpleasant touch of patronage in her tone. “Does he look as if he were repenting?”
“Men can’t go about in sackcloth and ashes,” said Ralph; “and you surely wouldn’t have him cultivate a face a yard long? It’s his nature to be full of fun, and, for my part, I would far rather have to do with a man who has been openly punished than with a hypocrite who sins with impunity and goes about posing as a philanthropist.”
He thought resentfully of Sir Matthew.
“I can’t think how you can speak to him,” said Myra Kay bitterly, “For your own sake, and for the sake of the profession, you ought to have nothing to do with him. It was not just a common case of wrongdoing—it was a specially atrocious affair throughout. They say you are the son of a clergyman. I should have thought you would have had better judgment than to mix yourself up with such a man.”